This question, just like pretty much any question about marketing, has a very simple answer: it depends.
It’s the honest answer to everything in marketing. Why? Because there are so many variables that come into play with any marketing campaign.
There may be best practices to go off of or even some more methods that seem to be tried and true, but you still won’t know the answers you seek until you answer the next question: what does it depend on?
To get those definitive answers, the only way is to test and pay close attention to the data in your reports. However, you have to start somewhere. To start off on the right foot, there are two factors to consider when beginning an email campaign. Those two factors will help you discover the best day and time to send a newsletter campaign or a promo email … and help you with several other things when it comes to email marketing. Here’s what you need to consider:
Understand your goals
You must know what you hope to accomplish with each and every email you send out. For newsletters, it’s often providing company updates, sharing some choice posts from your blog or giving your subscribers a slice of life for your company and its employees. For promotion emails, it’s to inspire customers and leads to purchase.
Sometimes, the best time and day to accomplish this are one and the same. However, a newsletter that is helpful for a subscriber to read at their desk at work may not be the time that the same subscriber would want to be online shopping. So, know what you want to accomplish is the first step. Step two is what will help you decide the best time to schedule that next newsletter or promotional email.
Understand your audience
Knowing who the individuals are that comprise your audience is imperative to successful email marketing. As is reaching them at the time that is most convenient to them.
Like I mentioned above, sometimes it will be the employee opening up your email at their desk. The old standard of Tuesday through Thursday at 9:00AM would still work for them.
However, a work-from-home parent may have different priorities for when emails are read. For them, it could be after the kiddos have gone to school or headed off to bed. Perhaps a business selling vacation packages would want to hit their subscribers’ inboxes on the weekends when they’d be more likely to be planning such a trip.
Gaining an understanding of your audience and creating a persona for their email consumption behaviors will go a long way in answering the question of when is the best time to send a newsletter or promotional email.
So, I’m sorry I can’t tell you to send newsletters on X day at Y time, or promotional emails on A day at B time, but I’ve given you the steps to take to fill in those blanks for you and your business. Why? Because it depends.
